IntroductionWhich media product Who is the audience? How did you choose them?What expectations might audiences have of your text and products similar to yours?How have you tried to meet these expectations?What you found to be your audiences’ motivates for accessing texts similar to yours?

Below and on the following slide are some clear consideration you might want to think about when applying varying audience theories. Again like before, not be shocked by different theories appearing to make the dame point albeit maybe a little differently. How I sustain my audience’s full attentionWhat moments of the familiar (mixed at times with the unfamiliar) did you provide but yet consider your media product to be successful?How you/group tried to meet industry demands but yet create something which you hoped your audience would find different and fresh. Why and to what extent did you deliberately subvert, experiment or challenge typical codes and conventions of media products similar to your own?

Theoretical evaluation

Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure.

In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made.

You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply. Here are some links to some starting points for theories:

A minimalist summary of what to cover...

Paragraph 1 Intro: which of your projects are you going to write about? Briefly describe itParagraph 2: what are some of the key features of the concept you are being asked to apply? maybe outline two of the theories/ideas of particular writers briefly

Paragraph 3: start to apply the concept, making close reference to your production to show how the concept is evident in itParagraph 4: try to show ways in which ideas work in relation to your production and also ways in which those ideas might not apply/could be challenged

Paragraph 5: conclusionAgain remember you only have 30 minutes and that you really need to analyse the finished production, rather than tell the marker how you made it

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture!) and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking.

Basic principles of the hypodermic/bullet theory! Media like syringe- injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into audience

scenes of violence- one single text can have an immediate impact on the audience –

This idea of how the media works was heavily influenced by the results of Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment - children who observed an adult acting aggressively acted more aggressively compared to children who acted less aggressively after observing a non-aggressive adult model

Bandura and his colleagues believed that the experiment demonstrates how specific behaviors can be learned through observation and imitation.

Although it is important to know reasons why the hypodermic syringe theory could never apply to everyone equally e.g.…... however, thinking about your own media product, what specific production decisions did you take to try and encourage your audiences to interpret and respond in a desired way and, how successful do you think you were in achieving it? (Remember to give examples taken from your product)

Extension: Reflecting on the content of your audience feedback, to what extent was your audience’s interpretation of your text far from passive?

Users & Gratification Theory: Denis McQuail 1987 conducted a study in the U & G tradition and found the following common reasons for media use:

Information finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings,

society and the world seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices satisfying curiosity and general interest learning; self-education gaining a sense of security through knowledge

Personal Identity finding reinforcement for personal values finding models of behaviour identifying with valued other (in the media) gaining insight into one's self

Integration and Social Interaction gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging finding a basis for conversation and social interaction having a substitute for real-life companionship helping to carry out social roles enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

Entertainment escaping, or being diverted, from problems relaxing getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment filling time emotional release sexual arousal

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, Blulmer and Katz stated that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine. Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg)

substituting soap operas for family life Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values

from texts Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports,

financial news, holiday bargains Zillmann has shown the influence of mood on media choice: boredom encourages

the choice of exciting content and stress encourages a choice of relaxing content. The same TV programme may gratify different needs for different individuals. Different needs are associated with individual personalities, stages of maturation, backgrounds and social roles.

However, McQuail suggests that the dominant stance of recent researchers in this tradition is now that personal social circumstances and psychological dispositions together influence shape specific acts of media choice and consumption.’ Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)

Now reflect on the use and gratification of your own music video or opening sequence.

Write down which categories apply-( extended writing- however, to what extent would you say your audiences had total freedom in making up their own minds as to how to read and/or react to your desired creation of meanings?

Extension +: and to what extent was this dependent on the demographics of your audience i.e. Gender, age, cultural group etc.

Media information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through

"opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they

have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow

Think about this honestly – to what extent could it be argued that the success/take up of media products similar to yours, is heavily influenced by the opinion of others- give your reasons

Extension + and to what extent did you use the opinions of others to help sell your text/increase it’s popularity? (think viral marketing/advertising to reach your audiences) using pre existing social networks and other technologies to achieve distribution- it can be delivered by word of mouth or distributed through the use of new media technologies.

We all create individual meaning from a text. We decode meaning according to upbringing, gender, social status etc

David Morley- Nationwide survey Stuart Hall- encoding/decoding Preferred/ dominant reading- how the

media producer wants you to consume the product

Oppositional reading- rejection- alternative reading

Negotiated reading- acknowledge and modify preferred reading

What would be the dominant reading that you want the audience to accept?

What is the oppositional reading? What would be the negotiated meaning? (extended writing- to what extent do

your believe the success of your media product is largely dependent on the social group viewing it?

More refined version (less immediate)- suggest media effects are not immediate but build up over a period of time and that audiences become desensitised to violence or that repeated exposure to media violence audiences erodes inbuilt inhibitions against acting in certain ways- However, thinking about your own media product, to what do you think your audiences exposure to similar products like your own, improved the chances of yours being successful?

Extension: and to what did you deliberately expose your audience to the unfamiliar, in order to appeal to them?

Do we consume media in isolation? We can never consider one example of the media on its own

– we are always choosing from many different alternatives and more confusingly our understanding of one text may be

affected by our knowledge of another. It is very rare for us to concentrate fully on any media text –

we may skim read through a magazine or glance at various different channels while using the remote. Once again,

quantitative research cannot cope with this – it simply counts the number of texts encountered but doesn’t consider whether the audience have taken them in.

The media can become an important part of the routines of our lives – you may want to watch Neighbours when you get in from school or listen to the Chart Show every Sunday when you do your homework. It is very rare for us to be completely alone when we encounter a media text.

To what extent can Morey’s theory be applied to audiences’ consumption of your chosen text

Which combined processes of signification were used to encourage audiences to interpret and react in a desired way. Media processes of signification include film techniques learnt in Yr12 – sound, mise en scene, editing and camera movement, framing and angles.

What do you consider to be your audience’s motivates for accessing texts similar to your own?

At a push, what aspects of your media text might some consider to be potentially harmful and/or negative?

To what extent did you use viral marketing to reach your audiences ( viral marketing, viral advertising, use pre existing social networks and other technologies to achieve distribution- it can be delivered by word of mouth or distributed through the use of new media technologies. How did you use media technologies at any stage of production to reach your audience?